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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867947">What comes next?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megabyte4269/pseuds/Megabyte4269'>Megabyte4269</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Epilogue, Hogwarts, Not Epilogue Compliant, Post-Battle of Hogwarts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:54:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,590</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867947</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megabyte4269/pseuds/Megabyte4269</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my version of what I would have liked to see from the Harry Potter Epilogue.  Its not very long, but to me it reflects more with how the characters would handle everything that's happened.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>What comes next?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry Potter moved slowly down the stairs caught up in his thoughts and memories.  Nine years had passed slowly, and yet quickly, since he had accepted the position of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.  He knew he must have walked these halls a thousand times in those years, but he still felt that sense of wonder each time.  The Great Hall decorated for the different holidays never failed to take his breath away, if only for a moment. </p>
<p>              Part of him halfway expected each night when he laid down to sleep that he would awake in the Gryffindor dormitory as a child again.  Just as a part of him expected it, a part of him also longed for it.  He wished nothing more to return to those simpler times of running around the castle with Ron and Hermione.  He wished he could go back even to the most boring times of falling asleep listening to Professor Binns drone on and on.  Life had been so different then.  <em>He</em> had been so different.</p>
<p>              Life after Hogwarts proved to be a rough adjustment for Harry, even more so than the others.  Even now, his classroom brought back the memories of Professors Lupin and Moody.  The décor had evolved, but they lived in these walls for Harry.  The comfort and more importantly the feeling of safety they had given him remained.  At every feast in the Great Hall, Harry felt a pang in his heart to not see Dumbledore sitting in his place laughing and telling jokes. </p>
<p>              On holiday’s he often joined the Weasley’s for their celebrations, but the atmosphere had changed.  They still enjoyed their fair share of laughter and merriment, but George did not laugh like he once did.  Harry was not sure if he would ever be his old self again, but then again, he did not think any of them would be.  Once he had noticed George standing in front of a mirror staring blankly into it, and then the man had gone about as red as his hair.  Harry had not known the words to say to convey to him that he knew those feelings all too well.  Just as George had looked for Fred in the mirror, he looked for Sirius in every black dog that he saw.  Harry wished more than anything he could go back to his eleven-year-old self.  In those days, he had mourned for his parents he never met and the life he never got to have.  But these years had taught him a brutal lesson: mourning those you have never known will never come close to the pain of mourning those you have.</p>
<p>              After the dust settled on the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had gone to live with the Weasley’s for a time.  He brought his meager possessions and moved into Fred and George’s old room.  Even though Mrs. Weasley had told him that he could decorate however he chose, he knew in both their hearts neither of them could bear that.  How could they possibly lose anymore of Fred than they already had?  Harry only stayed a month before the weight of living in a museum proved too much for him.  He instead rented a small flat in Hogsmeade not far from where George and Ron lived. </p>
<p>              Ron had decided to stay with George and do his best to help run the joke shop.  Neither Ron nor George needed to be alone, so it suited them perfectly to stay together.  They had invited Harry to stay and work with them, but he could not find the strength to face everything.  He knew that the Weasley’s all considered him family, and yet Harry so disconnected and alone.  Hermione and Ginny had begged him to come back with them to Hogwarts the next year, but he had turned them down as well. </p>
<p>              That first summer they had all met for dinner together twice a week at least.  Their haunted tired looking faces forcing smiles as they sat down for drinks and games.  None of them had dared to broach the topic that seemed to hang in the room, that all of them were barely hanging on by a thread.  Finally, late on evening after a few fire whiskey’s Hermione asked the question as if to the universe.  Does anyone else still have the dreams?  As they went around the room, each felt a weight lifted off their shoulders as they admitted to the sleepless nights.  The dreams had taken years to fade, but after that moment they knew they were not alone in their suffering. </p>
<p>              Looking back, Harry wished that he had joined Hermione and Ginny at Hogwarts or worked with Ron and George at the joke shop.  Even as he saw his friends begin to heal, he fell behind as he stayed behind.  He broke off his relationship with Ginny when she went back to school.  Somehow, he had convinced himself that she would be happier without him, even though they both knew it was not true.  He spent the year reading books and wandering aimlessly through Hogsmeade lost in his thoughts.  He still saw his friends, but between work and school it became more infrequent. </p>
<p>              Harry found himself wandering near the remains of the Shrieking Shack in late June when he turned around to see a familiar sight.  A cat patronus sitting politely at his feet.  Headmistress McGonagall had requested his presence for a meeting in her office the next morning.  As Harry pulled his wand out, he wondered for a moment if he would even still be able to cast a patronus.  Had he lost too much? Could he feel that kind of joy again?</p>
<p>              Raising his wand, Harry concentrated on a memory, but not the memory he had used so many times before.  He thought back to summer before his fifth year in school.  At the time he had been full of anger and resentment, but not anymore.  That feeling of joy and safety being surround by all the Weasleys, Lupin, Moody, and especially Sirius.  His family.  As he uttered the words, he felt another surge of joy as he saw the silver wisp start to form and he knew he was whole enough for this.  The first true smile in over a year spread across his face as his patronus took form.  Hedwig.  She floated there effortlessly ready to carry his messages like she always had.  In that moment, Harry understood that he was no longer the thirteen-year-old boy that.  He had become his own person, and no longer an echo of his father.</p>
<p>              And so, Harry had become the next Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.  At first, he had been hesitant to accept the position.  He was not sure if he could bear to be back in the castle after everything that had happened.  Someone had let the news slip though because that night Ginny showed up at his door to talk to him.  It had been killing her to see him slowly slip away more and more over the year.  The next morning, he accepted the position for the start of the new school year in September.  That one talk with Ginny had turned into another and another as they got to know each other as the people they had become. </p>
<p>               A trickle of whispering first years pulled Harry out of his thoughts as they slowly filled up the classroom.  He smiled as he saw a little Slytherin girl talking in hushed tones with a Hufflepuff boy.  Those kinds of interactions had been unheard of when he was their age, but it brought him joy to see the next generation outgrowing old hatred.  He heard his name being whispered because even still every child in the wizarding world knew his name.  He swore he heard Ginny’s name somewhere in the room, but it was hardly surprising.  Every year he knew he would be asked at least once what it was like to be married to a famous Quidditch player. </p>
<p>              His eyes latched onto the bright green hair first.  Harry could not help but stare at the Hufflepuff boy sitting down in the middle of the front row.  Teddy.  His presence made Harry acutely aware of how many years had passed since the war, and yet how these children’s lives had been irreparably changed by it.  How so many of their relatives had died bravely just so that these children could sit in front of him now to learn. </p>
<p>              Harry wished in that moment that Lupin was standing in his place.  That he had had the chance to be here to teach his son and watch him grow up.  He felt how unfair that life at been.  He knew he felt how Lupin must have felt all those years ago when he awoke to see Harry on the train.  Harry felt the weight of the responsibility to watch over these children for those that could not.  To do right by them. </p>
<p>              And so, he started his first lesson in front of a starry-eyed classroom.  When he began to teach, Harry always felt that sense of peace wash over him.  Here he felt most like himself.  Like he was again the fifteen-year-old boy that had started Dumbledore’s Army.  He understood he could never be that boy again, but he also understood that he had found his purpose here.  Staring out at the faces in front of him, he knew that all was well with these children, and that would give him peace.        </p>
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